Thumbing through the latest glossy covered dirt rags might have you believing that beefed out all mountain and enduro rigs are the only thing worth paying attention to, but digging a bit deeper reveals another type of whip that's redefining what an XC bike can do. The all new 2017 Santa Cruz Tallboy Carbon CC 27. 5 X01 Complete Mountain Bike expands the scope of XC and shows us that it's possible for an XC bike to revel in burly, rocky terrain just as much as fast laps on buttery smooth singletrack. To put it simply, Santa Cruz aimed to make the Tallboy a more capable, versatile bike this year, without taking it cruelly far away from the design that earned it so many loyal 29er followers. Its major changes include a more relaxed, spacious geometry and the improved durability and clearance of Santa Cruz's latest reworked linkage. Santa Cruz also modified its flip chip technology which was first seen on the Hightower to ready it for use on the Tallboy 3. The flip chip was developed to allow riders to switch between 29er and 27. 5 wheel sizes, and on the Hightower, necessitated a slight change in head tube angle. However, Santa Cruz has fine tuned this technology to allow the geometry to remain exactly the same across each wheel size. This means, depending on the day, your Tallboy 3 could be barreling with stability through gouged up grassy trails and rock gardens, or floating over root latticed switchbacks with the plush, quiet confidence of 27. 5. By XC standards, the Tallboy 3's head tube angle leans it towards the trail side of the spectrum, from a traditional 70. 2 degrees to a more relaxed 68 degrees, and Santa Cruz managed to shave a little over 13mm off the chainstay length to bring them down to 17. 01in. This, coupled with a significantly longer reach, results in a rear triangle with the snappiness you'll need to dice through the tight and twisties, and a stable, confident front end for diving off the XC course and into the white knuckle stuff. Geom...